03 - God King (2 page)

He watched the ships surge through the crashing breakers and slide up the
shingle beach. The village’s few warriors ran to meet them with axes held high
over their shoulders, old men and youngsters mainly. Fifty men of sword-bearing
age were all that were left to defend the village.

Nowhere near enough.

Whooping war shouts echoed from the stony beach as women and children ran
towards the cliffs. There was no escape there, just a postponement of the
inevitable. These warriors would leave no survivors. They never did.

Even isolated in his cave, he had heard the recent scare stories of the
seaborne raiders, the killers from across the ocean who wiped out entire tribes
in their vengeful slaughters. Their crimson and white sails were the terror of
the coastline, a sight to drive fear into the hearts of those that had once been
masters of the ocean.

A score of armed men dropped from the lead ship, led by a warrior in gleaming
silver armour and a gold-crowned helm. He bore a mighty warhammer and smashed
one of the village warriors from his feet with a single blow. More ships
beached, and in moments a hundred warriors were ashore. Arrows leapt from the
decks of the ships, serrated tips slicing into proud flesh, and flame-wrapped
barbs landing amid the tinder-dry homes of the villagers.

A dozen warriors were dropping into the surf with every passing second.
Though the defenders of the settlement were hopelessly outnumbered, they fought
with the fury of warriors given one last chance to reclaim their honour in
death.

Lightly armoured men with bows fanned out onto the beach, taking aim at the
fleeing villagers and cutting them down with lethally accurate shafts. Iron
clashed with iron on the shore as the last of the defenders were overwhelmed. He
watched the raven-helmed warrior hurl himself at the leader of these reavers
from the sea with his axe slashing down over his head. The warhammer swept up,
and the blade slammed down on its haft. Such a blow should have shattered any
normal weapon and split the enemy’s skull, but he knew that this was no ordinary
warhammer. Nor was the warrior who bore it any ordinary foe.

The warhammer spun in the warrior’s hand, faster than any weapon of such
weight and power should move. Its head slammed into raven-helm’s face, caving
his skull to shards and knocking him to the red snow.

“No pyre for you,” he said as the warriors from the sea advanced into the
settlement.

Its buildings were burning and its people dead, yet the raiders kicked them
down, leaving nothing standing to indicate that anyone had once called this bay
home. This was no raid for gold or slaves or plunder. This was an attack of
destruction.

The raiders hauled the bodies of the defenders from the sea and began
stripping their helmets. One by one, the warrior with the warhammer bent to look
at their faces, but each time he would shake his head in disappointment.

Wyrtgeorn chuckled as the warrior shook his head and hissed, “You won’t find
what you’re looking for among the dead.”

He heard a noise from further down the cliff and pulled back into the shadow
of the cave mouth. A slender, hard-faced woman carried a pair of children up the
icy cliff paths towards the cave. Her steps were faltering, and he saw a pair of
arrows jutting from her back. She saw him and tried to speak, but no words came,
only a froth of bubbling blood.

She reached the ledge before his cave and collapsed onto her knees. Her eyes
were frantic. Only seconds of life remained to her and she knew it.

“Wyrtgeorn,” she said in a language not her own. “Save… my… children.”

He backed away from her, shaking his head.

“You must!” she said, thrusting the youngsters toward him. He saw they were
twins, one a boy, the other a girl. Both howled with uncontrollable sobs. The
woman’s eyes closed and she swayed as death reached up to claim her. The woman’s
daughter threw her arms around her mother’s neck and the pair of them fell from
the cliff, falling a hundred yards into the sea.

The warriors on the shoreline saw them fall, their eyes drawn up to the cave
on the cliff. He knew he was invisible in the shadows, but the boy stood on the
ledge as plain as day. Four warriors ran from the beach towards the cliff paths,
and the man cursed. He felt a tugging at his fur jerkin and looked down into the
coldest blue eyes he had ever seen. The boy stood with his fists bunched at his
sides, and there was pleading desperation in the way he met the man’s gaze.

“You are Wyrtgeorn,” said the boy in the man’s own tongue. “Why did you not
come down and fight them?”

“Because I have no wish to commit suicide,” he replied.

“They have killed my tribe,” wept the boy. “Why won’t you kill them?”

“I will kill anyone who tries to kill me,” said the man.

“Good,” said the boy. “Zhek Askah said you were a great warrior.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“The shaman who named you Wyrtgeorn. Lord Aetulff wanted you and your friend
slain, but Zhek Askah said you were a killer of men and that we should let you
live in the cave.”

“Did he now?” replied the man. “I wonder why. Perhaps it was to save your
life.”

Four warriors were climbing towards them, carefully picking their way along
the treacherous path. They carried long knives, eschewing axes on so narrow a
ledge. The man watched them come: confident, arrogant and with a swagger that
didn’t match their abilities. He’d watched them fight on the shore. They were
competent warriors, but no more than that.

“There is a passage at the back of the cave,” said the man. “It leads through
the rock and comes out a few miles north of the village. Wait for me there. I
will join you shortly.”

“I don’t want to run,” said the boy, and the man saw fierce determination
behind his fear.

“No,” he agreed. “You don’t, but sometimes that’s all you can do.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” said the man. “It doesn’t matter. But I know now why I did not
leave this cave.”

Before the boy could ask any more, the light at the mouth of the cave was
blocked as two of the warriors reached his squalid dwelling place.

“Get behind me,” said the man, pushing the boy away.

The first warrior stepped cautiously into the cave, his eyes adjusting to the
gloom. A second followed close behind. The blades of their knives glittered in
the dim light.

“What do we have here?” he said, his voice heavily accented. “A hermit and a
shit-scared boy. Should be nice and easy, lads.”

“You should go and never come back,” said the man, his voice calm and even.

“You know that’s not going to happen,” said the warrior.

“I know,” agreed the man, leaping forwards with dazzling speed. Before the
warrior was even aware he was under attack, the man slammed the heel of his hand
against his throat. Windpipe crushed, the warrior dropped to his knees, already
choking to death.

The man caught the falling dagger and plunged it into the throat of the
second warrior. The blade sliced into the gap between his iron torque and the
visor of his helmet. He gave a strangled gurgle and toppled to the ground as his
lifeblood squirted over his killer and the walls of the cave.

Lethal instincts returned with a vengeance as the hot stink of blood filled
the man’s nostrils. He leapt, feet first, towards the remaining two warriors.
His booted feet slammed into a chest encased in a heavy hauberk of linked iron
rings, and the warrior was pitched from the ledge, arms flailing as he fell to
his death. The man landed lightly as the last warrior thrust a dagger towards
his guts. He swayed aside, locking the warrior’s arm beneath his own, and sent
two lightning-quick stabs of his purloined dagger through the visor of his
victim’s helmet.

“No glorious sights in the Halls of Ulric for you,” hissed the man, letting
the body fall from the ledge to dash itself on the rocks far below. He stood on
the edge of the rocky spit of stone before his cave, his arms and upper body
drenched in blood. His heart should be racing, yet it beat with a casual rhythm,
as though he rested in a peaceful meadow beneath the clearest sky.

Looking down at the beach, he saw the raiders staring up in horror. Alone of
the raiders, the warrior in the gold-crowned helm met his gaze. A dozen men ran
for the cliff path with murder in their hearts. The man threw the dagger away
and returned to the cave, moving with grim inevitability to the cleft in the
rock.

Quickly he pulled out a pitch-blackened bundle of cloth and carefully undid
the rotted length of twine that secured it. The boy looked on in wonder as he
revealed a glittering sword with an ivory handle and gold-inlaid hilt. The blade
was slightly curved, in the manner of the Taleuten horsemen, and it shone like
fresh-minted silver.

His hands closed around the hilt like a long lost friend, and he sighed as
though welcoming a midnight lover.

“Zhek Askah was right,” said the boy. “You
are
a great warrior,
Wyrtgeorn.”

“I am the
greatest
warrior,” said the man, stripping the sword belt
from the first man he had killed. He slid his own blade home. It was a loose
fit, the scabbard designed for an Unberogen stabbing sword. “And do not call me
Wyrtgeorn. It is not my name.”

“It isn’t?”

“No. My name is Azazel,” he said, letting the name settle in his mouth, as
though he hadn’t really earned it until now. The boy looked up at him with a
mixture of awe and wariness.

Azazel smiled and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, leading him towards the
hidden passageway through the rocks. The warriors pursuing them would find the
entrance, but they would never find them in the warren of tunnels that lay
beyond.

The boy looked back at the slice of light at the cave mouth and hesitated.

“There is no going back,” said Azazel. “There never is.”

The bodies were taken from the cave and carried down the narrow cliff path to
the waiting ships. None of their number would be left behind on this cold land,
they would be taken back to their homelands for the proper funerary rites to be
observed. Their souls demanded no less. Wolfgart studied the ground and splashes
of blood on the walls with eyes of cold anger, tracing the course of the fight,
though it could hardly be called a fight such was the speed with which his
comrades had been killed.

He ran a gloved hand through his long red hair, pushing the woven braids from
his face as he shook his head. Wolfgart was no youngster, but his body had lost
only a little of its youthful power since he had first swung a sword in battle.

His body was a warrior’s, yet his face was that of a rogue.

“It was him, wasn’t it?” said a voice behind him.

“Aye,” agreed Wolfgart. “But then you knew that, didn’t you?”

“As soon as I saw him on the ledge,” said the warrior with the gold-crowned
helm.

Wolfgart gestured to the tracks and scrapes on the cave floor. “It happened
so damn quick, the poor buggers didn’t have a chance. He killed Caeadda first
and took his weapon. Then he cut Radulf’s throat with it. You saw what he did to
Paega and Earic.”

The warrior removed his helm and handed it to another behind him. His golden
hair was bound in a short scalp-lock and his face was handsome with a rugged
edge that made him a leader to follow in war and an Emperor to obey in peace.

Sigmar, ruler of the lands of men and Emperor of the twelve tribes.

“Only Gerreon could have killed them so quickly,” said Sigmar, his
differently coloured eyes tracing the course of the fight and reaching the same
conclusion as Wolfgart. “I should have known he would be here.”

Wolfgart turned to look up at his friend and Emperor. “Why? How could you
know he would be here?”

“The burning ship,” said Sigmar. “It is how the Norsii send their dead to the
gods. To fight in the shadow of unquiet souls is an omen of ill-fortune.”

“Aye, well we’ve had enough of them over the last year,” grumbled Wolfgart.

Sigmar nodded and moved to the back of the cave, peering into the darkness of
a rough passageway. Wolfgart’s eyes were drawn to the mighty warhammer hung on
Sigmar’s wide leather belt. The hammer’s rune-encrusted haft glittered with pale
winter’s light and its heavy head was unblemished by so much as a single drop of
blood. This was Ghal-Maraz, ancient weapon of dwarfcraft that had been gifted to
Sigmar by King Kurgan of the mountain folk.

Sigmar turned and Wolfgart was struck by the change that had come upon him in
this last year. Though he had just entered his fortieth summer, Sigmar carried
himself with the poise and strength of a man half his age, yet it was his eyes
where he bore the weight of years. The rise of his Empire had been hard won,
built upon foundations of blood and sacrifice. Friends and loved ones had been
lost along the way, and enemies old and new tore at the newly-birthed Empire
with avaricious claws.

A full year had passed since the defeat of the Norsii invasion at the foot of
the Fauschlag Rock; a year that had seen Sigmar’s raiding fleets scouring the
icy coastlines of the north. Village after village was burned to the ground and
its people put to the sword. Wolfgart had been as vocal in his support as any
when Sigmar had announced his plan to take the fight to the lands of the Norsii,
believing that such vengeance would safeguard the Empire for decades to come.

Now he wasn’t so sure, for these raids were building hatred for the lands of
the south that would only fester and grow stronger with every passing year. With
every bloody slaughter, Wolfgart understood that Sigmar’s reason for these
attacks was more personal. In every ruined village, he sought signs of the
swordsman Gerreon, the traitor who had killed the woman he loved and plunged a
broken sword into the heart of his dearest friend.

Wolfgart rose to his feet, his height a match for Sigmar’s. The wan light
entering the cave only served to highlight the frustration he saw in his
friend’s face.